tted his costume to competent inspection. Resolute to do
his whole duty, he was not content to send his card to the diplomatic
corps, but, having engaged a handsome coach and four, he called upon
each member of the diplomatic body, from the ambassadors to the
secretaries of legation. Having performed these labors, and having
discovered that a special object with which he was charged could not
then be accomplished, he had leisure to observe that St. Petersburg,
in the month of August, is not a pleasant residence to an invalid of
sixty. He describes the climate in these terms:--

"Heat, dust impalpable, pervading every part and pore ...
Insects of all nauseous descriptions, bugs, fleas,
mosquitoes, flies innumerable, gigantic as the empire they
inhabit, who will take no denial. This is the land of
Pharaoh and his plagues,--Egypt and its ophthalmia and
vermin, without its fertility,--Holland, without its wealth,
improvements, or cleanliness."

He endured St. Petersburg for the space of ten days, then sailed for
England, and never saw Russia again. When the appropriation bill was
before Congress at the next session, opposition members did not fail
to call in question the justice of requiring the people of the United
States to pay twenty thousand dollars for Mr. Randolph's ten days'
work, or, to speak more exactly, for Mr. Randolph's apology for the
President's bad spelling; but the item passed, nevertheless. During
the reign of Andrew Jackson, Congress was little more than a board of
registry for the formal recording of his edicts. There are those who
think, at the present moment, that what a President hath done, a
President may do again.

It was fortunate that John Randolph was in retirement when Calhoun
brought on his Nullification scheme. The presence in Congress of a man
so eloquent and so reckless, whose whole heart and mind were with the
Nullifiers, might have prevented the bloodless postponement of the
struggle. He was in constant correspondence with the South Carolina
leaders, and was fully convinced that it was the President of the
United States, not "the Hamiltons and Haynes" of South Carolina, who
ought to seize the first pretext to concede the point in dispute. No
citizen of South Carolina was more indignant than he at General
Jackson's Proclamation. He said that, if the people did not rouse
themselves to a sense of their condition, and "put down this wretched
old man," the